Tiny Bit of Hope
by whotookmycheese
Summary: She was alone. Completely alone. For the past three months she had lived in denial, in hope that somehow, sometime, somewhere the Doctor would find his way back to her. And now, only fiveteen hours ago, all that hope had been ripped away from her.


A/N: It was the nightmare that came to me first. I'm kinda proud of it. Please R&R so I can make myself a better writer.

Sorry for my bad grammar!

Disclaimer: I own nothing! Some of the quotes in the nightmare are from episodes "The Satan's Pit", "Doomsday" and any episode with a Dalek in it.

 **Tiny Bit of Hope**

 _\- The Valiant Child who will die in a battle so very soon._

 _Toby's skin was covered with acient letters, his eyes glowed red, and he repeated those same words over and over again until his skin cracked open in the middle of his face like an eggshell and a Dalek peeled it's way out._

 _\- EX-TER-MI-NATE!_

 _Rose tried to move, to shout, but she couldn't and the Dalek shot her right to her heart and she fell backwards, down, down, down through a blinding whiteness. She hit on something soft, she was laying in a glass coffin. Around her there were people, humans and aliens, everyone she had met, and they were all crying. She started to slam the glass, shouted out load that they would see she was still alive._

 _\- You're dead, officially, back home._

 _She turned her head around to see the Doctor and noticed he wasn't there among those who grieved._

 _Dead, dead, dead, deadeadead, echo answered. The glass went clouded and Rose reached her hand to wipe it away. And she was wipeing the other way around, she was the one standing next to the coffin and the Doctor layed in it, pale and cold. Rose reached her hand once again, the glass moved away and she was just about to touch his cheek when her hand slipped right throw it._

 _\- I'm still just an image._

 _They were standing on a beach, waves roaring and crashing on the sand, water coming up. It rose to their anckles, to their knees. It was cold._

 _\- No touch._

 _Notouchtouchtouch, said the echo._

 _\- I love you, she said when the water reached her waist._

 _\- Quite right too._

 _Water rose to her cheast._

 _\- And I suppose, it it's one last change to say it..._

 _To her neck. Say it say it sayitsayit._

 _They were both under the water. Waves were strong, freezing cold, and they were pulling the Doctor away from her. No. No!_

\- Say it!

She waked up to her own scream in a cold sweat. She looked desperately around her, trying to find anything for comfort. She only saw ridiculously large room with high windows from floor to the roof. No photos, no familiar pillows and books. No humm of the TARDIS. She was alone. Completely alone. For the past three months she had lived in denial, in hope that somehow, sometime, somewhere the Doctor would find his way back to her. And now, only fiveteen hours ago, all that hope had been ripped away from her. He had ripped it away. And she felt so angry and so guilty and so desperate and misrable. And all those feelings mixed up and she started to cry. Silently, at the beginning, because she knew how much Jackie hated to see her cry. She knew she should be getting over this. It wasn't like she and the Doctor ever... She felt so strong stung in her stomack she couldn't even finish the thought. Every bounche of her heart made the pain stronger and stronger until she hoped it would just stop beating and it would all be over. She wished she could die, why couldn't she just die. She felt like the air she had left in her lungs was all she got, and she took desperate, short gasps. Her door opened and Jackie ran in the room.

\- Oh, sweetheart, she said, sat next to her on the bed and pulled her in her arms. And Rose cried out load, violent sobs from deep within. Her whole body was shivering as she clung to her mother like drowning. The words dropped out her mouth as syllables, she swallowed again and again but the sobs seemed endless.

\- I... 'm - s - so... I...

\- Shh, Jackie hushed stroking her hair. - I'm here. Oh my dear, I'm here.

Rose knew it. Jacke was there, and so was Pete and Mickey but none of them was the person she needed the most. Her sobs turned into a scream, a howl. Tears didn't fall anymore, her agony was too strong for them. Jackie cried as well, to the pain of her daughter's, holding her close.

The next few weeks Rose was tierd. It was like that one night, one bad dream, had took all the energy away from her. She had no power nor will to leave her room. She didn't speak to anyone. She couldn't even cry. She was just plain tierd. Most of the time she slept, feeling like even a decade of sleeping couldn't take her weariness away. A lethargy had laid over her it's heavy blanket. Her sleep was heavy but restless, she had only bad dreams, almost every time the same.

Jackie came to her several times a day. Sometimes she pretented to be sleeping, felt how her mother gently stroke her hair.

\- Remember that I'm here if you want to talk, she said every time. But what was there to talk, what was there left to say? She felt like she was out of words, there was nothing to describe how she felt. So she remind silent and Jackie left her alone, sighing, and it left Rose feel like it was all her fault, that she shouldn't feel like this, that everybody thought she was being unresonable with her grief. And she pulled the cover over her head and fell in a restless sleep.

She ate when she remembered, tiny bites of the toast and fruits someone kept bringing into her room. When she was up she felt nothing. She stared to the emptiness hoping that she would just fade away. Thoughts crossed her mind but she pushed them away. There was no strength in her to think. Sometimes she kept thinking the same sentence over and over again. Not any important sentence, not any beautiful or courage sentence, more like 'My anckle itches" and she found herself thinking it half an hour later, after it didn't itch anymore.

She remembered often her time with the Doctor, all those memories. Their firsts. First trip, first argument, first time he took her hand in his, first hug. Their lasts. Last trip, last dance, last time they laughed so hard they dropped on the floor, last time he looked into her eyes and grinned wildely. All those times she had felt so powerful love towards him, all those times she had thought he felt so too, all those times the universe tried to rip them apart. In the Sarah Clarke's wedding, in the Game Station, in Krop-Thor, in the coronation, in 2012 Olympics... And finally it had succeeded, put paperthin wall between them. Wall that was so weak and must never been broken. Wall that would keep them apart from each other for the eternity. Eternity she was supposed to spend with him. And thinking all that made her sick, it made her whole body ache, all those tight knots around her body got tighter until she couldn't breath propaly. But she still kept thinking those things because it was the only way she felt something, even if it was pain.

One day when the house was empty she climbed to the roof and sat on the edge. She dropped her slipper and watched it fall to the lawn. She thought how high she was, what would happen if she fell. Would she die or just cruch into something not dead but neither alive? Would that make any difference to the state she was in now? Because she felt like an empty shell, her soul, her life had been ripped violently away from her and all that was left was a body without life. So how was she still alive? She dropped another slipper. What would happen if she just fell? It was just few inches and she would fall, fall like a rock, like a body, and no one would be there to catch her.

Every week, once a week, Peter came to Rose's room after he came home from the Torchwood and told her how much she was missed and needed and they wanted her to come back. She only shook her head. No, she wasn't ready. She, Rose Tyler, the Defender of the Earth, wasn't ready to defent the Earth. She could hear the Doctor's voice in those words, see his face, smile and eyes so full of the same misery she felt. He felt it too, the loss. Last change to say it, he had said that, and Rose kept filling the sentence on her own. Last change to say it, Rose Tyler. A flush, a wave, a hurricane of pain hit her lungs and she rised her knees against her cheast like it could protect her from the pain that came inside. She had gone throw that conversation so many times, repeated those few minutes over and over again in her head, tried to remember every blink he made, every smile, every shadow in his acient eyes. She closed her eyes and fell on the bed, tried to breath steadily, tried to breath. Sometimes she forgot to breath and that fizzines, that nausea it caused felt dangerously tempting. Just to stop breathing. Just to stop. Stop everything. Stop living.

Jackie gave birth of her son in the Spring and everyone thought that having a baby in a house would wake Rose up. Even she thought so. But when the blue-eyed helpless creature was layed on her lap she just steared at him. So this was the greatest miracle people had, this pink little bundle that could do nothing but eat and sleep and cry. She had seen miracles so much greater that this baby was nothing. She had seen a whole planet frozen in a moment, the whole beauty of the Rose Galaxy, dinosaurlike creatures flying on the sky. And she felt so strong yearning to all that she had lost that this little miracle she had had felt nothing at all, and she gave it back to Jackie.

\- He's perfect, she said, knowing this was what was expected, and left the room. She slept thirtyone hours straight and woke up hungry and alone.

It had been seven months since that day on that beach as Rose referred to it in her mind. Seven months that felt like eternity, like a blink of an eye, like it could still end like a long, horrible nightmare. Sometimes she childishly hoped it would be a nightmare. Sometimes she hit the wall with her fists so hard and long that her knuckles started to bleed, just to remind herself that this all was real. She wondered how much physical pain it needed it would cover the pain of a soul. She played with the knives but never made a cut.

Peter came to talk to her second time that week. She knew it meant something bad had happened. He wouldn't come twice if it wasn't something bad. When he told her there had been observations of stars going out she just shrugged. Stars died all the time, galaxies died, and there was no way stopping it. It was part of the sircle of life. She had learnt if long time ago. Everything ends at some point. Pete only shook his head.

\- Three stars at the exact same time.

She blinked. Weirder things happened, humans had holes to their brains, cats were nuns, humans turned into trampolines, werewolves exist. She had watched a whole galaxie got sucked in a black hole, a sivilization went there. But then Pete said something else. Something that made the time still.

\- At the exact same time as we found a short flux in the walls between realities. I think we need him.

The Doctor. We need the Doctor. She needed the Doctor. She was halfway to her closet before Pete could even finish his sentence. There was some familiar kind of feeling inside her, some warm glimpse of light under that pain and destruction. Something that burned the knots around her heart and lungs and stomack. She felt a tiny bit of hope. And that was basically everything she needed right now.

That night she found her mother from the baby's room, watched her to talk to her little brother, and felt love so strong for her and him and the whole universe for letting this happen.

\- Mum, she said and Jackie looked up from baby-Tony. Rose stood on the door, her eyes were swinning in tears but there was a smile in her face. The first real smile Jackie had seen in almost a year.

\- Mum, she said again, her voice shivering. - I might see the Doctor again.


End file.
